Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Good tips, keep em coming! 

Kitchen Geezer has been and taken the plinths. Grabite has already been sealed so that's good,  and he's going to ask the granite people about the joins, which agreed weren't as they should be.

So we're getting there. This stuff should be done the back end of next week which is good. 

Mr Cheery has taken another load to the tip (mostly bags of rubbish that we've forgotten to put out for the bin collection over the last couple of months 🙄 ). I'm just sneaking in a couple of hours of work, trying to catch up with myself... and then hopefully will move on to putting things away in the kitchen!

greenbee

I've got the day off today Cheery, and it's a lovely sunny day here. So I've been doing stuff in the garden on the basis that the landscapers are taking rubbish away on Monday, so will remove anything I can get ready for them by then. 

Like you I suspect I'll also be doing a couple of hours work at some point in order not to be constantly thinking about how much there is to do next week (I already have two meetings on my day off on Wednesday... 

EssexHebridean

Many years ago a fellow tenant from the building my first (rented) flat was in was getting rid of two racks - a two tier vertical style plate rack which is fairly useless for plates as the metal “rails” are too close together, and a far more practical three tier horizontal one. I grabbed both as thought they looked useful. Both are still in use - the three tier ones is in a cupboard and does indeed house all our plates, and the other lives in the larder where it is excellent for tins and tubs of dried goods, the box that contains various sachets etc, and on the upper level, all the dried fruit/dessicated coconut etc. pretty much can’t imagine life without either now. 

Trying to think of anything else we found useful when we reorganised. We approached things slightly differently to greenbee as we decided that belongings could (and probably would) be changed, but functionality was the key driver for us. So we worked out where the kettle was going to live, and the right size cupboard for above it for mugs, glasses and all tea/coffee making stuff. We made sure the bit of worktop next to the fridge was the right size to comfortably take a breadmaker. And we elected for two single high level cupboards right next to one another at the other end rather than the double cupboard that everyone told us was more practical…that proved a good choice when (as predicted!) upstairs flooded us and we only lost the contents of one cupboard, not two… 🙄 

We separated food type things out into stuff we use all the time, stuff we use less often, and “I never even knew we had that!” The latter bits got thrown away before we even started for the most part - OR a concerted effort just to use them, and the other two piles made the decision about what wanted to be at the front of cupboards, and what could go further back. Also, a utensil grid for hanging things on is probably the best invention in the world, EVER, if you have wall space in the right place. 

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, all good tips and stories! 

I did the most urgent work, but then decided everything else felt far less important and so it will have to wait til next week.

Mr Cheery decanted everything from the temporary kitchen into picnic baskets 😂 and I can already see some stuff in one that we brought here with us when we moved over 3.5 years ago so I suspect some of that can be chucked at this point... 🙄

We've got FOUR of those exciting magic corners shelves so I'm pretty excited about filling those 😂

Got a bit of a list for tonight...

* turn the heating up - it's still on 15 and I'm huddled under a blanket reluctant to do anything 🙄
* listen to voicemail to see what B&Q want me to do in relation to the wrong carpet tiles they sent us
* start moving stuff into new kitchen
* hang washing up
* put the Christmas tree up! 
* banks & YNAB

Started to make a list for the rest of the weekend but I'll save that for tomorrow...

South_coast

I never knew there were suggested layouts for how you should fill up your kitchen cupboards 🤯! I'll be happy when I can just get everything which belongs in the kitchen actually in the kitchen 🤣! 

Definitely get the heating up, Cheery. Remember how good it felt to be warm!

EssexHebridean

You already know I was trying to work out why your washing up needing hanging, yes?! 😂😂

Jellytotts

I hate (with a huge passion) fitted kitchens so we don't have one.  We made our own units (on wheels) and bought a second hand wardrobe (that we put on wheels....we love wheels) that we shelved out that had become our pantry cupboard.  I saw a lovely one in JL for £2k but this one cost us £90 including delivery and £8 for a pack of floor tiles that I've lined the shelves with.

We used pine for everything, including the worktops and cut, sanded, stained and oiled each piece (sounds idyllic but it wasn't).  A big old pine dresser holds the "occasion" China and glasses and gives us drawer space and everything just slides out so I can Hoover behind it...magic! (Well aside from the cooker and sink but the cooker is on legs so I can still Hoover and mop under it.

I've got all my food in the pantry, all in second hand baskets and I know where everything is, it's all there, I can lay my hands on it in seconds.  

It's a dream to cook in and we even made a matching wheeled unit that holds the recycling bins and doubles as an island when I need extra work top space.

I will never go back to a fitted kitchen.....ours cost just over £2k including appliances and each piece can be replaced if it breaks/wears out/gets attacked by rabid squirrels.

I sometimes think modern kitchens are all about the showy outside rather than the practical inside bits.  

Saying that, I do still love looking at other peoples kitchens on Instagram and seeing how they transform a space.

greenbee

I agree about the hanging grid. I brought mine from the last house and it's about the only thing I've had the whole time I was waiting to finally get round to putting the kitchen in. It keeps a huge amount of stuff both out of the way and easy to access. 

Fortune_Smiles

My top tip - don't worry too much about it.  When we first moved in I filled the kitchen cupboards according to how I thought things would work.  And they did work that way in the main.  However, I thought I'd be doing most of my food preparation on the kitchen island and I actually do most of it on the counter in front of the biggest wndow.  Also, I put the tea making things in the cupboard closest to the back door, thinking Mr F could come in from the barn/garden to make tea and not have to traipse through to get to the kettle.  However, that area collects things that are to be taken out - tins for the recycling, things to go back in the barn, etc.  So I ended up shuffling the contents of a couple of cupboards around.

I think you'll need to work in it for a bit to get the right arrangement.  How exciting to have a permanent kitchen 😁

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Jellytotts, your kitchen sounds ace! Love the idea of everything being on wheels. Sadly given how sloping we've discovered our floor is, I fear we'd be constantly trying to shove stuff back up the hill to the other side of the kitchen if we did that 😊😊

It's funny, I've never really had a choice of where to put stuff in a kitchen! Always moved into someone else's house, or a shared house, except when we moved here I suppose and then for the first year we had SO many cupboards it was ridiculous, four walls of cupboards, bottom and top, we could never find anything 😂😂 That only lasted a few months though before we had to remove the whole thing to take the ceiling out...

Now it's a horseshoe shape, and only bottom cupboards, so there's actually not that much choice anyway. Left side has the cooker, middle has the sink, and right has the fridge and a breakfast bar. 

Anyway, I promise I'm not overthinking it too much 😂 I've put main spices in the spice rack on one side of the cooker, and the rest in a basket in the cupboard on the other side of the cooker. Tea stuff and mugs are under the kettle, and under that is breakfast stuff. Pasta etc on one shelf, flour and baking stuff on another. 

Still working on pans - some of ours are very heavy, and I suspect they might warp the rails of the magic corners, so I've already messed up my own system. Mr Cheery is objecting to the slow cooker, well, being in existence (he hates it 😂😂) and certainly being in the kitchen, so that might have to find a home in the utility room before he relegated it to the garage 😂😂

We've got two rounded corner cupboards- obviously the shelves are triangular so no idea what's going to go in those, and two really thin small cupboards on the ends, again, not sure what to stick in those. I'm sure plenty of things will turn up looking for a home 😂😂